Technical Field
The technical field relates generally to remote communications infrastructure and, more particularly, to remote devices that communicate with cloud services.
Background Discussion
Cloud computing services provide customers with access to scalable computing to resources, without requiring that the customers own dedicated computing equipment. To utilize cloud services efficiently, customers often employ an architecture in which devices remote from the cloud include substantial computing resources. For example, some conventional cloud solutions rely on a “concentrator” or “hub” that aggregates data from devices located in a particular geographic location, establishes communications with the cloud service, and transmits the aggregate data to the cloud service. Concentrators such as these are typically configured with software that stores configuration and security data for the devices locally within the concentrator and that queries the devices within the location using the configuration and security data. Concentrators require substantial computing resources to store configurations of devices to which they attach and to distribute processing from the cloud service and into the local network to achieve reliability and system scalability.
In some conventional cloud architectures, each remote device executes an interface component, such as a local web page or other user interface, through which the remote device receives data about the user of the device. This user data is combined with data descriptive of the remote device and is provided to a concentrator that provides the combined data to the cloud service. The cloud service, in turn, stores the combined data locally and processes the combined data by executing one or more applications. In some instances, these applications interact with the user via web pages served by the cloud service, and the cloud service transmits modified portions of the combined data to the concentrator. In other instances, processes running on remote servers determine the need to send data to remote devices and request that the cloud service send modified data to the remote devices via concentrator. Depending on the content of the modified portions, the concentrator may provide the modified portions to one or more remote devices. Thus, under these architectures, the remote device may be administered both locally and via the cloud service.